Bondo. I've used Bondo for custom grips on several guns. I've read in gun magazines about pro shooters putting Bondo on their guns and wrapping their hands around it to make a custom fit pistol grip. It works quite well.

Well, I know... but I'm sayin' my collection is one of my happy places. We'd better buckle down for the winter.

*grinds teeth together and waits for onslaught*





Even happier place... or on a beach with me gal...

I made a sweet gun.  I don't have any HOTT picz.  I used by old cock pump, and taped some stefans to it.

Your name says it all...

And I don't think I want to use a cock pump on my next gun, either.

TINH is anothe site, but it's primary purpose is to help people modify guns.

TINH

Yeah, I had half a gun. I was missing pretty much everything.

I would only do my mod if your cylinder was broken or parts were missing.

Anyway... yeah, you can order the darts from Hasbro or make your own Laramis. But, if you actually plan on using the SM1k in a war, I'd suggest modding the gun to fire micros. That is, if you don't care to mod one of the more rare guns.

Well it's been months since I've posted anything constructive, so I'll post some things I've noted while working in the ol' Armory.

The Longshot

The last gun I modded some three months ago. The front gun is useless in my opinion. I saw it to be a Scout with a new shell. It has no value to me so it's in parts bucket #12. The gun stock is an excellent weapon for indoor use. It's fairly accurate and has an excellent rate of fire.

I'm sure mods are out there for the Longshot already, I just haven't had time to sit down and look at them. It is a great idea to undertake the general modifications on this blaster. However, it is not an entry level mod, so inexperienced modders beware. A Dremel tool in invaluable when fiddling with one of these. Perform the usual air restrictior removal to start off with.

The spring in this blaster is so-so. It's big, but a tad on the weakside. I use on almost every mod, a new spring. The spring of choice at the Armory is Handyman Springs from Home Depot. They are the length of a first generation Nite Finder, but twice as thick. The spring will compress in most Nerf guns, but I will throw a word of caution to you. Reinforce the casing with some sort of metal. I use aluminum or brass. Really just anything to give added support.

A good idea is to install a nice sturdy rubberband from the front of the Longshot to the bolt. This will bring the bolt forward after cocking elminating you manually doing it after each shot. I installed a spring on the side to do this, but this is slightly more complex. Remember that everything time you want to put in a fresh magazine, you'll have to hold the bolt open otherwise it will shut with no magazine. I find the automatic bolt closing method to be a bit quicker in combat.

The magazines are very well made for a Nerf product. I find that I can load in seven micro rounds into the magazine. Most of you know that I am a champion of the larger caliber mega dart. I found that mega Stefans will fit in the clip and chamber in the weapon. Megas chamber nice and tight which is always a good thing. They most definitely hit harder than micros and I found little to no deviation in range between the mega and micro when fired from the Longshot. I find accuracy to be bit better due to the shorter, stouter build. This stabilizes the dart a bit better than that of the micro. The only drawback is that the magazine will only accomodate six megas due to their larger diameter.

The drawback to the Longshot itself is the magazines. You only receive two with the blaster. This can present a problem with reloading. I fixed this problem by fabricating stripper clips from cassette tape casings. You'll only want the side that the tape fits down into. Dremel out the bottom piece of plastic to allow the rounds to slide out:



The whole stripper clip should slide right down into the magazine, thus charging the spent magazine. Now put your finger on the top round and pull the stripper clip up out of the magazine. Six or seven rounds are now in the the replenished magazine. I will post pictures of the loading process in the morning to simplify things. The stripper clip retains the darts well, so no need to worry about rounds falling out. The stripper clip accomodates either micros or megas. I've made four of these to keep in pouches during battle. This is infintely faster than reloading the magazines round by round.

Streamline rounds are actually quite good. They've been in use around here for a good while with good effect. However, Stefan rounds are ultimately your best choice. This takes us to the next section, ammunition.

Ammunition

I have been handloading my ammunition for years. I was using the tried and true fish sinker as the weighting system in all of my rounds. However, fabricating rounds for the Longshot proved to be difficult. The standard sinker was too heavy and the round would drop while flying down range.

I remedied this by testing the optimum weighted round for the Longshot. The standard streamline is 14.6 grains on a gunpowder scale and is in excess of two inches. I experimented and found the optimum length to be 1.75 inches. The most effective weight is 13.6 grains. I have replaced the old fish sinker with shotgun pellets. A single pellet weighs in at .8 grains. A 1.75 inch piece of foam backer rod with five pellets give us 12.3 grains. The way I load the Longshot rounds is to take my foam backer rod and make an "X" shape insicion on the top end. I put five pellets in the incisions like so:



Place a nice dome of hot glue to seal the pellets in. Your end weight should be 13.6 plus or minus. Be sure when placing the pellets to make sure they are evenly spaced so the one side is not weighted more than the other because this obviously causes decreased accuracy and wobbly flight.

When handloading a mega round for the Longshot, the length should be 1.5 inches with five pellets. The weight still comes out to a nice 13.6.

The ranges from these darts fired from a Longshot are as follows:

Micro
Long- 91.3 feet
Short- 83.4 feet
Average- 87.7 feet

Mega
Long- 91.4 feet
Short- 78.5 feet
Avg- 88.4 feet

I find that these rounds I loaded specifically for the Longshot work well with other blasters, too. Therefore, I have made the switch to all of my rounds to the new weight system and make sure every dart is acceptable for combat in accuracy, stability, and hitting power. I suggest before you Nerf, to take about fifty rounds and test fire them. Make sure they are shooting where you want them to. You are bound to find unsatisfactory rounds in your batch. Take only the rounds that will best serve you.

Thus, gentlemen, I will preach consistency when handloading for your blasters. Take pride in your ammunition making. Experiment and see what you can come up with for your different blasters.


I have concluded that the Longshot is more than adequate for all major styles of combat. Once modified, it is pleasingly strong enough to cast rounds well past the 80 foot mark consistently. Some indoor players stray from the use of Stefans and will find that the stock Streamline will perform well. The volume of fire is nearly double that of a traditional muzzleloading Crossbow or BBB.

I hope you find this article useful. Thanks for reading.

Here's my inernal box magazine on a SuperMaxx1000:
T-26 Carbine

Here's my clip fed anti-personnel rifle:
Mountain Rifle

You're on the right track, mate. Try to clean it up a bit. Overall, good effort and I like where you're going.

Plus pistols are pistols because they are small your stock just defeats the purpose unless for some reason your going to use it as your primary.

Yeah, that's why I made the stock for mine. The guy plays indoors therefore range is not king as in the outdoor genre. It is his primary.

You bastard. Now I feel the urge to go out and buy several Tech Target Sets. Seeing as my parents won't let me buy stuff online, I'm pretty much stuck buying the full, overpriced sets.

~ompa

Omp, that would not be a bad idea. In a couple years, we'll see noobs posting topics begging for a TT like they do now for LnLs. It'll be utter chaos, but I've got em' covered.

Ah... let the hoopla begin...

I'll throw in my two cents...

I think they are coming out with the "Scout Tech" because the TT pistol we have now is too powerful when modded. The TT when modded with any of the thousands of mods is very Lock N' Load-esque. It's powerful, accurate, and plentiful. It has a large plunger tube with a nice big spring. The Scout has a minute tube and a laughably rediculous spring. It just has no power. I believe they are trying to phase out the "potentially" powerful guns execpt the BBB, as it has already come out, but no one knows for how long.

Yep... the original TT will be hot stuff down the road, just like the LnL.

Much thanks, gentlemen, much thanks.

It's not better than going out and buying a pump gun, but I did it for comfort. Like you said Vacc, I am very partial to the SSII. I also love the way it feels. It feels incredibly balanced and fits my large had very well. Just took an old classic and updated it a bit.

To be toally correct, it should be SSII000 with the extra "0." However, I chopped it off because I didn't like the way SSII000 looked as opposed to SSII00. If anyone is going to try to duplicate this, feel free to ask questions and I'll answer them to the best of my ability.

Yeah, do tell me what happens to your project, Hunter. If I do recall, I was going to buy that SSII case off of you a while back. I hope everything goes well.

It's powerful! It's accurate! And above all, it's comfortable! It's the Sharpshooter II00... Enough with the cheesy commercial.

It's been a while since I've posted anything useful, so I shall break the silence with this one. This is what I call the Sharpshooter II00. For all you dorks who can't figure out the name, it's a Sharpshooter II with the internals of an AT2k, hence the II00 (2000).

The chief reason for this integration is one of comfort. The AT2k is a powerful gun; many of you arm yourself with one. However, I personally find that the gun is somewhat uncomfortable. In my opinion, the Sharpshooter II is hands down, the most comfortable and user friendly gun ever made by Nerf. Well, I recently discovered that my favorite Sharpshooter II was falling apart (but that's ok, I have 5 other SSIIs ). The parts that the plunger tube sit in broke out and rather than installing aluminum bracing, I decided to breathe new life into it.



What I did was take the internals of the AT2k out and situated them into the SSII casing. I had to Dremel out a lot of the casing, but I got everything in there. I also had to replace the tubing with a more flexible tube that I got out of a broken SM3k. I drained the goo tube and cut it off and screwed the orange "well" back together. I filled in the hole of the well with hot glue.

I next had to take off two inches of the plunger tube to fit it in the gun. I also did this to the plunger and repositioned the black handle. I positioned everything inside the case and hot glued everything securely. I had to put in a piece of aluminum to help brace the airtank and keep it from moving around. Next, I drilled a hole through the original SSII trigger and ran a piece of wire through it and wrapped the wire around the rod that opens the tank's air valve.

The end product looks like this:



With a 3.5 inch 9/16 brass barrel (I only had 3.5 inches of brass left), I get about 85 feet with five pumps and 75+ with three. Remember, it takes a couple more pumps to reach max pressurization because I removed two inches of the pumping tube. As always, feel free to ask questions. I hope you've enjoyed another Starbuck/Noid modification.

Well... acutally... this is my first real integration. The only other ones that I've done before it put in Secret Strikes in Nite Finders.

Much thanks to all and to Talio since he doesn't dish out praise very often. I'm glad you all like it. The trigger wasn't too hard really. I had orginially planned to use part of the original AT2k trigger on it, but I decided to fabricate my own with wire and the original trigger.

... I get about 85 feet with five pumps and 75+ with three. Remember, it takes a couple more pumps to reach max pressurization because I removed two inches of the pumping tube.

Previously stated...

No, you can send it to me. I can modify an SSII with my eyes shut. I dunno how many of those I've modded over the years.

We milsim somewhat around here. It's more of a hybrid. I wrote a thread about that a while back. It can be seen here.

I had one a year ago and modded it with great success. I cut six 3" pieces of 1/2" CPVC and wrapped electrical tape around them about 3/4 of the length. I Dremeled the exposed portion so that it would fit into the barrels on the drum. I them jammed the inserts into the barrels so that the CPVC fits down in the "slots" so the SuperMaxx air vavles would open. I was consistly hitting over 80 with four pumps. PM me if you have any questions.

Yes, I used CPVC that I Dremeled to get in there. I can't remember if I had to Dremel some of the insde of the barrel or not. But, regardless I got them in there. You just have to work with it.

I packed me' bags and handed in my admin badge before the brouhaha occured. I don't really know what happened to it other than Hal just never really Nerfed and he wanted to start his business or whatever.

Pwnt!

I use .30 caliber machine gun ammo cans for my loose rounds. Per can it'll hold 120 micros or 95 megas. I use .50 cal cans for my belted rounds for both my Razorbeasts. They're quite nifty.

Already sent you a PM over on NHQ.

TTG has easier mods, especially if you go with mine. The entire mods take only 15 minutes and get great ranges.

Splitfire is the obvious choice there. Two quick shots, but is hard to find.

Other than that, I'd go with a Nite Finder simply because they are everywhere and easily modded.

No, no! The DT3 pistols, once modded, is one of the most accurate and powerful pistols ever. Check out my mod. This gun is one of the, if not the most underrated gun ever.

No, the Backlash is. The thing is smaller than a NF and gets 70'+ flat.

~ompa

I agree, the Backlash, when modded, is crazy, but I said it is one of the most underrated guns. In my opinion and since I am biased torwards it, I think it's the most underrated.

Springs do not concern me, friends. I have a source for springs so if one breaks or is defuct, I can just reinstall another one.

The range for the BBB is with about a 40 degree angle.

As far as attaching a motor... I've done that in the past with Razorbeasts. I ended up break off the handle and screwing it up permanently. I might screw around with the RZB and that damn broken Power Wheels motor I have somewhere...

Indeed, Viper. Tis I, Starbuck from the days of NO and NC.

Greek Assassin... I found an old Army net in the base that I've made provisions for. I put two dowel rods on the tripod and stretched the net between them. I tried cardboard, but it exposes your torso. The net protects your entire upper body. I'll post the pics of it tomorrow.

Here's some nifty guns I finished recently.



This is the 3B I got finished with last night. I cut him down, taking off all the crap on the top and bottom. I also added some old cut up shotgun shells on the side for ammo holders. He's my artillery carbine and I've named him "The Governor."



I know everyone has seen a modded SSII, but I took a strip of copper, covered in electrical tape and duct taped it to the side to make a clip. It will secure the gun anywhere you can fit the clip. Eliminates the use of a gauky holster.







This was a Star Wars water pistol. Named him "Kilroy." I sawed off the end where the water nozzle is and melted a plastic stopper over the water tank. Just pop a round on the plastic tube inside and pump a quick 25 times. It generally fires accurately 50-60 feet. I also took the plastic sight out of an old Bow N' Arrow and took a fine tipped pen and drew in the crosshair for the scope. I added the Nerf sticker on the side for the heck of it.

Last... but certainly not least...


My artillery piece.









I took some copper tubing and bent it around the end of the barrel to make a bipod and taped it on. It doesn't look the greatest cosmetically, but the bipod is in the developmental stages. Next, I mounted the modified RZB to an old tripod that I found at the flea market for $4. It gives us a stable firing base and allows for quick, easy, and accurate firing. I sprayed some WD-40 down in the mechanism that turns the belt for smoothe operation. I also made a device that virtually eliminates all jamming and skipping. I took some copper tubing and ran it underneath the gun and bent it out in a "L" shape. I used zip ties to secure the copper tubing. Next, I put some rubber and wooden rollers on it to keep the belt feeding properly. 99% of the time if it jams, it is because the belt is too heavy. This device keeps some of the weight of the belt off the gun. I also took it apart and oiled it down and stretch the main spring, so I get about 45+ feet with it. We have two 100 round belts that we use. I had some old .50 caliber ammo cans that I picked up at the army surplus for $5 and we keep them in that. It not only looks like a real machine gun, but it is an easy way to store your ammo. It's a great field piece to set up as an offensive weapon or set it up for base defense. I've even put in in the back of my buddy's truck and made a "gun ship" out of his truck. Haha.

People have pointed out that it is somewhat of a burden of the battlefield since it is large and is mounted, however, I understand that. I was able to attach a sling so I could tote it around off the tripod. My mobility was not affected whatsoever.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask or PM me. Hope you guys enjoyed these guns.

That razorbeast is for basedefense, not losing, so 50 feet is perfectly fine.

My thought exactly. Most of the time, you will have people rushing you at close range. The RZB is a master of close quarters combat.

I'm glad you enjoyed my work, Formerly Sane.

Moose... I've now brassed the barrel and absolutely stretched the hell out of the spring. I put some WD-40 in there as well to assure smoothe operating. It hits out at around 120 with my Stefans.

I should buy up Razorbeasts, mod them, and re-sell them. Haha.

Thank you, Blink. Nope, my 3b is not hard to cock at all.

Yes, I am the Starbuck from Nerf Center and former admin of Nerf Online. My BBB carbine will get about 90, sometimes a hundred feet since I put on a brass barrel and replaced the spring. Angled it will throw a dart about 120 feet. I'm glad you all enjoyed my work.

Believe it or not the chain doesn't cause any mobility problems. We can still turn it just fine. If you keep the ammo box directly beside of it and about three inches away from the tripod, it's perfect. The only problem is when we try to tilt it up. We can get to about 45 degrees, but anything over that is impossible because the chain then freaks out. This, however, is not a giant problem because we rarely would one want to fire over 45 degrees.

Still working with the motor. I'll have info on it later.

Yes, we've used it in battle and yes, it's very effective as far as defense in concerned. The range of 45 feet is average, sometimes on a good day we'll get a more closer to 50. Range hasn't caused any problems as of yet. As afore mentioned, we have 200 rounds worth of ammo belt hooked to it, so it's ideal for defense. My BBB carbine fully modified gets accurately 110 feet with a stock airjet dart. With a Stefan, it'll push 120 or so.